Regional Economic Development: Canada’s Search for Solutions

Billions of dollars are committed every year in Canada to regional development through a variety of programs: federal-provincial shared-cost agreements, freight rate assistance, tax credits, and more. In his widely acclaimed first edition of this book, published in 1986, Donald Savoie shed some welcome light on the Canadian experience of regional development policy. With this second edition he brings the analysis up to date.

Savoie considers the various political and economic forces, past and present, that have shaped the development of policy. He offers a balanced and perceptive assessment of the appropriateness of our objectives for regional development and evaluates the effectiveness of successive phases of policy in meeting those objectives.

New chapters in this edition report on all policy and program changes introduced since 1985. These include the elimination of a large federal government department responsible for regional development and the establishment of two new regional development agencies headed by their own ministers and deputy ministers. Savoie also updates the progress made in alleviating regional disparities and documents changes in public policy environment in the past few years stemming from factors such as free trade, the growing federal deficit, and the constitutional crisis.